ESA Advanced Concepts Team

📣 The first edition of European Space Agency - ESA's & #IAA's #SPAICE2024 #conference is coming closer, and preparations are in full swing. In fact, #registration will close soon (2 September 2024)! The conference bridges between a broad selection of #AI techniques and #space domains! A major part of the conference consists of oral and poster presentations covering (not only!): 🔭 Astrophysics and Astronomy 🌍 Earth Observation and Data Analysis 🌐 Frameworks and Integration 💾 Hardware Acceleration 💬 Large Language Model (LLM)-based Systems 🛰 Onboard AI 🗺 Navigation and Control 🐝 Interplanetary Trajectories & Descents Have a look at the preliminary agenda: 👉 https://lnkd.in/e5tcUZCD The themes of the conference will be set by our amazing keynote speakers: 💻 Jürgen Schmidhuber (IDSIA USI-SUPSI, KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology)) 💬 Ioana Ciucă (UniverseTBD, The Australian National University, Stanford University) 🎨 Ryan McClelland (NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 🎮 Katja Hofmann (Microsoft Research Cambridge) 🤖 Angela Schoellig (Technische Universität München) We are extremely honored to welcome Jürgen Schmidhuber, who will open #SPAICE2024 with a special remote keynote! For details, visit our conference webpage: 👉 https://lnkd.in/ekDR_EC5 And last but not least, SPAICE will dedicate a whole late afternoon to an #Unconference session, where the program is proposed and decided by all participants together during the conference. This session is intended to promote discussions, brainstorming, and networking across disciplines. 👉 https://lnkd.in/ei7MmM89 Curious to join us and intermingle in-between disciplines, charting the course for the future of AI in space? The conference will take place at ESA's European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT) in the UK! You can still register for the conference until 2 September 2024 (12:00 CEST): 👉 https://lnkd.in/ezz7QZkh #AI4Space #ArtificialIntelligence #Aerospace #ESAACT #ML4Space #MachineLearning #DataScience #esascience #esa_eo #ECSAT #ESA

🌟 Exciting News from SPAICE2024! 🌟 We are thrilled to announce that the full proceedings of the SPAICE2024 conference are now available! 🚀✨ The conference brought together leading experts in AI and space technology to present their innovative research and ideas. From satellite collision avoidance to AI-powered space exploration, these papers represent the cutting edge of AI applications in space. 📄 Access the Full Proceedings Here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eT2gstgs Looking for specific papers? You can also browse individual submissions from the conference: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ex9Psj5h We are proud of the incredible contributions made by the SPAICE2024 community and look forward to seeing how this research will shape the future of AI in space! 🌍🚀 #SPAICE2024 #AIforSpace #ActaAstronautica #SpaceTech #ArtificialIntelligence

I am very happy to share that the project I started to work on almost 7 years ago is after all this time and effort finally entering a new phase, the start of the construction of the building! The project that began with an idea to set-up a fast prototyping, digital manufacturing and collaboration lab for enhancing innovation and creativity at the European Space Agency, has over time, despite multiple setbacks and difficulties, evolved into a larger endeavour in collaboration with the NL Space Campus. I am therefore also thrilled to see the building of CometLab marking the start of other developments on the NL Space Campus - the Dutch hub for international space sector. With all the excitement we are hoping to enter the operational phase of CometLab mid 2025. You are very welcome to join the groundbreaking event on the 2nd of October at the NL Space Campus in Noordwijk.

✨ A huge thank you to all the participants, speakers, and organizers of SPAICE2024! The conference was a tremendous success, filled with insightful discussions, groundbreaking research, and inspiring collaborations. 🚀✨ A special shout-out to the "unconference" sessions, which were a true highlight, showcasing the great spirit of our community. These sessions fostered open, dynamic exchanges of ideas and brought forward fresh perspectives on the future of space exploration and technology. As we reflect on the incredible contributions made, we eagerly await the upcoming conference proceedings and the selected papers to be published in special issues of Springer's Astrodynamics and Elsevier's Acta Astronautica. These publications will showcase some of the most impactful work presented at SPAICE2024, pushing the boundaries of space innovation. Stay tuned for news on future editions, and let’s keep the momentum going in advancing the field of space science and technology! 🌌 #SPAICE2024 #IAA #Unconference #Astrodynamics #ActaAstronautica #SpaceInnovation #ThankYou

Take a look at our new paper: "𝐏𝐀𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐬 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐟𝐭" published on IEEE JSTARS: https://lnkd.in/dcuqSFMY The paper describes our simulator 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐒, a Python package to simulate scenarios involving multiple spacecraft and their interaction while considering the effects of constraints of space missions (e.g., power consumption, radiation, thermal effects, etc). Despite being application agnostic, PASEOS has been designed with a focus on 𝐎𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 applications, including 𝐨𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐟𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 on satellite constellations. 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐒 was developed by the ESA Advanced Concepts Team, 𝐄𝐒𝐀'𝐬 Φ-𝐥𝐚𝐛 and AI Sweden. Many thanks to my coauthors: Pablo Gómez, Johan Östman, and Vinutha Magal Shreenath, PhD. A special thanks also to the students from 𝐓𝐔 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐟𝐭 𝐀𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 that are contributing to expand its functionalities (Marte Medina León, Moana Lengkeek, Giordano Nesci, Tim Smit). PASEOS is available open-source here:

📢Last call to be a headline sponsor at the SPAICE Conference! Don’t miss the opportunity to give a keynote speech at our gala dinner👇

With the approval of the ethics board, I have started conducting interviews with space scientists and researchers about creativity and imagination in their work. Ranging from engineers to exoplanet scientists, from AI specialists to biologists, I talk with them about their projects, their day-to-day practice and about their educational background. I love this part of the research, and I am very grateful that people are willing to share their time and knowledge with me. However, in all honesty, the balance is a bit off! I am missing voices from individuals who identify as female or nonbinary, and I am determined to do something about it. It is super important to me and my research (and, may I press, to science in general) to have a good balance of voices in research. So, dear (ESA!) network, if you are a 'she' or 'they', would you be up for a (digital) coffee after the summer break? If you are interested, just let me know, and I will send you all the information you need about the research. The interview takes about 45 minutes, no preparation is needed. Any field in in space research is of interest (from architecture to physics to psychology.) Also, if you know any space scientists or people working in the space industry who use she/her or they/them pronouns, could you please poke them about this research? That would be amazing! In short: I'm conducting research on the epistemic role of imagination in space science (ie. how imagination plays a role in making discoveries, formulating new models, decision-making) at Utrecht University. Please feel free to reach out to s.l.l.winters@uu.nl or leave a message. More information can be found here: https://lnkd.in/g5-uqiSh Thank you for your attention! 👋👩🚀👩🏿🚀👩🏾🔬

🛰 Could future space missions utilize entirely neural-based on-board optimal guidance and control systems? ⏱ Together with the Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab, TUDelft), ESA Advanced Concepts Team set out to answer this question in the latest issue of the Science Robotics journal, which features our work on 'Optimality Principles in Spacecraft Neural Guidance and Control'. 🪐 We're excited to highlight the progress in developing end-to-end neural architectures for tasks such as interplanetary mission guidance, planetary landings, and close-proximity operations. We propose advanced neural models capable of learning optimal strategies and greatly improve the autonomy and efficiency of spacecraft and unmanned aerial vehicles. Moreover, we explore drone racing as an excellent test environment for these architectures. 💻 Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/eZr22XGS 📖 And for the details about our recent work, check out our freshly published review in Science Robotics: https://lnkd.in/gH2KYjx9

📣 Extended deadline for SPAICE 2024 📣 Following a number of requests, we have extended the deadline for SPAICE 2024 until *midnight (00:00) on 27 May 2024*! Keep an eye on the news page of SPAICE for announcements: https://lnkd.in/e2RGDmYK

📣 More updates about European Space Agency - ESA's SPAICE conference! 💰 Registration fees are now on our webpage: Students: 150€ / 200€ (early / late) Regular: 250€ / 300€ (early / late) 🤗 More information about registration and conference details (e.g., the dinner venue) will follow soon! 🔔 There is still plenty of time until the paper and travel grant deadline (19th of May 2024), so if you haven't already, consider submitting to SPAICE! More infos: https://lnkd.in/e2RGDmYK #SPAICE2024 #AI #Space #Conference #ESA